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FileRecovery posts

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Undelete Plus Offers Free, Fast File Recovery

Undelete Plus

We've gone through a ton of "simple" file recovery apps at Download Squad, and not all of them perform as advertised. Some take a painfully long time to scan only to report few - if any - recoverable files, dashing our hopes of retrieving that funny lolcat we deleted by accident.

Undelete Plus, however, is a champion at what it does. It quickly completes its scan for potential targets, displays them in a detailed list that includes likelihood to be recovered, size, date created, and path, and even gives you a second pane with totals grouped by file type.

We tried the recovery on formats that typically gives these programs fits - images and video - and Undelete Plus recovered each one without issue. Granted, there are going to be times when it can't - no recovery app is perfect - but we were certainly impressed in our testing.

If you've accidentally wiped something important from your PC, do yourself a favor and download it. We guarantee that it will increase the likelihood that your spouse won't make you sleep on the couch because you trashed their favorite pic or song by 70%.

[ via WinAddons ]

Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Ask DLS

Ask DLS: Recovering photos from a corrupted flash card

Digital cameras are great, you can store the equivalent of a dozen rolls of film at a time, delete bad shots immediately and download the photos to multiple devices. But like everything else, there can be a dark side (no pun intended) to digital photography: flash card corruption. Many of us have experienced that first hand, where a card that was working normally suddenly appears "empty" or refuses to mount on your system or starts reporting really strange error codes in the camera. If you haven't recently downloaded the photos to your computer, this can make a person positively apoplectic.

And let's not discount user error; say, while taking photos, you accidentally format the card instead of deleting that one shot, wiping out Little Granty's trip to the Apple Store (don't worry, that was just an example, we got the pictures for a future Squadcast) in seconds. Whoops.

Of course, with the right software, more often than not, some or all of those photographs can be recovered from both corrupted and reformatted flash cards. A reader wrote in asking for the best options (he wanted free, we try to balance price with "actually working") and here is a list compiled for various operating systems.


Read more →

Filed under: Utilities, Linux, Productivity, Open Source, Troubleshooting

Undelete files on Linux with GIIS

No delete keyImagine you just finished writing an important document with your favorite word processor. You hit save, and turn in for the night, satisfied that everything is fine. Unbeknownst to you, something happens as you slumber. Maybe it's a wayward nephew, maybe it's your cat, but at some point, something or someone deleted your precious file. What do you do?

Rest easy, friend, and take a look at this. Although the author of this app doesn't seem to know how to run SpellCheck, Get It I Say (GIIS) is an invaluable data recovery tool. All you need is a Linux based system and a hard disk partition that uses EXT2 or EXT3.

[Via Data Recovery]

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Apple, Microsoft, Freeware

TestDisk - powerful cross-platform disk recovery tool

TestDiskThe nightmare scenario: your computer won't boot. The drive seems healthy otherwise; you can access it when booting from another drive, but for some reason your drive absolutely refuses to boot. Take heart, it's possible that it can be fixed by TestDisk, a very powerful cross-platform partition recovery tool.

TestDisk was created to try to help users recover from seemingly unrecoverable scenarios. There are many things that can happen, due to either user error, or nefarious software that can cause a drive to become unbootable, but still otherwise contain all the same data. TestDisk can handle the majority of these situations. Amazingly, TestDisk can handle a massive list of file systems, and can be run under any of the following environments:
  • DOS (either real or in a Windows 9x DOS-box),
  • Windows (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003),
  • Linux,
  • FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
  • SunOS and
  • MacOS
While it's not something to play with casually, TestDisk is exactly the kind of utility you want around when you run into trouble.

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

PC Inspector File Recovery - Today's Free File

A hard-drive meltdown is every computer user's worst nightmare. Data recovery services charge an arm and a leg, and while your data is valuable to you, most people have a limit as to what they can pay for these services. It's hard to gamble that much money when there is no guarantee that the data can actually be recovered. While there's no better prevention than regular backups, if you find yourself in this mess, you might like to know that File Recovery by PC Inspector is available, and free.

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

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